‘This looked like a speck of wood:' Man discovers tick embedded in his eye

PRESTONSBURG, Ky. - A Kentucky man who couldn't remove an irritant from his eye learned he had a tick embedded in it.

Chris Prater, who works for a local electric company, was removing a tree from power lines with a crew when something got in his eye.

He tried flushing it out and eventually went to an optometrist, who discovered the tiny tick latched onto his eye. The doctor numbed Prater's eye and then used tweezers to pry the tick off.

"Once he grabbed ahold of it and pulled it off, the tick made a little popping sound when it came off my eye," he told WYMT-TV.

Prater was given antibiotics and steroid drops as well as a follow-up appointment to make sure his eye was OK.

His safety manager, Nathan Frisby, posted about what happened and included images of the tick stuck to Prater's eyeball.

Frisby said Prater's safety supervisor saw the irritant in Prater's eye and suggested a saline solution wash, but it didn't work. They also tried a wet swab and still the irritant wouldn't come out. That's when Frisby sent Prater to an optometrist.

He said that Prater and the other crew members had sprayed themselves with tick repellent before attempting to remove the tree from the wire.

"This looked like a speck of wood and I would never had thought of it being a deer tick!" he said in his Facebook post.

This story was reported from Los Angeles.